Works by Hugh Upton

It is a familiar idea that in learning to do philosophy we have to acquire new habits of thought, a supposition that may help explain why it does not happen quickly and why, especially in retrospect, the process has something of the feeling of an upbringing, of being gradually drawn into a distinctive way of life. Familiar also, to many, will be the instruction to concentrate purely on the arguments of those philosophers we study, ignoring the irrelevancies of character and (...) biography, advice seemingly aimed at a happy coincidence of moral and intellectual virtue, ruling out, as it does, the recourse to personal criticism in philosophical discussion.Yet if philosophy is correctly to be approached as a structure of ideas, detached from the life of its creators, why was it so intriguing, as students, to ﬁnd, occasionally, a picture of the author on the dust jacket of our set text, and why were we so curious about the characters of the speakers invited to philosophy society? Partly, no doubt, this interest was, and is, no more than a natural curiosity about people from whom we might expect to learn, an entirely understandable attitude, and not necessarily trivial, but one with no essential connection to the subject. Yet reading Alex Voorhoeve’s beautifully produced collection of his conversations with 11 thinkers on ethics does make one wonder whether the personal has some further bearing on philosophy, and if so how this might be and with what signiﬁcance. Perhaps even the dust jacket reﬂects this query, with 10 of the interviewees caught by Steve Pyke’s striking photographs, their faces sharply lit, yet not as we would ever meet them, emerging somewhat eerily from an impenetrably black background. All are reproduced in a larger format inside, together with an uncredited photograph of the 11th in an instructively contrasting style. (shrink)

This article explores the meaning and moral significance of presumed consent with particular reference to an opt-out policy for postmortem organ donation. It does so under two general categories: circumstances where we believe consent to have been given and those where we have no reason to believe that it has either been given or been refused. In the context of an opt-out policy, the first category would relate to the idea of tacit consent. It is argued both that substituting the (...) term ‘presumed consent’ would be misleading and that it is unlikely that the conditions for tacit consent would be met in practice. Regarding the second category, where the claim would be one regarding counterfactual consent, two main points are made: that claims about consent are unwarranted, and also that they are unnecessary to moral argument, given that the moral work is done by reasons other than any supposedly provided by a presumption of consent. (shrink)

This paper takes up the question of the role of philosophical moral theory in our attempts to resolve the ethical problems that arise in health care, with particular reference to the contention that we need theory to be determinative of our choice of actions. Moral theorizing is distinguished from moral theories and the prospects for determinacy from the latter are examined through a consideration of the most promising candidates: utilitarianism, deontology and the procedures involved in reflective equilibrium. It is argued (...) that the current lack of any generally accepted method of solving moral problems, together with the extreme improbability of philosophy achieving a plausibly determinate theory, should encourage us to approach the problems in a spirit of agnosticism regarding the way in which theoretical material might be of relevance. The practical test for both moral theorizing and moral theories is thus not determinacy but the degree to which they increase our understanding of moral problems by serving, as they do in philosophy, as a means of inquiry into their nature. (shrink)

Utilitarianism faces a difficulty in that what are typically regarded as natural goods seem to have possible occurrences that strike most people as morally reprehensible, yet which according to the theory must be taken to add to the good in the world. Thus, totake a recent treatment of the problem by Geoffrey Scarre, it would seem that even sadistic pleasures must contribute to human happiness and thus morally offset the concomitant suffering of the victim. Scarre has offered a defence of (...) utilitarianism, arguing that in fact such pleasures will undermine the self-respect that is required for happiness. In this paper I argue that a partial undermining is plausible but leaves the problem untouched, while a complete undermining can be established only by a stipulation that is unmotivated from a utilitarian point of view. (shrink)

The paper begins by defending the Hohfeldianaccount of rights (as equivalence relations) from thecharge that it cannot capture their specialsignificance, and thus cannot be used in a right-basedmoral theory. It goes on to argue that, because of amisunderstanding of this relational account, theconception of right-based morality that has emerged inrecent years has been variously flawed from theoutset. A particular form of explanatory priority waswrongly taken to be essential, and then eitherincoherently combined with equivalence, or taken to bea reason for rejecting (...) equivalence where right-basedthinking is concerned. In fact, this form of priorityis not sufficient for establishing a right-based moraltheory. It is also not necessary, since theHohfeldian analysis can be shown to be entirelyadequate to meeting the original aims of thoseproposing this approach to ethics. (shrink)

Democracy surrounds us like the air we breath, and is normally taken very much for granted. Across the world democracy has become accepted as an unquestionably good thing. Yet upon further examination the merits of democracy are both paradoxical and problematic, and the treasured values of liberty and equality can be used to argue both for and against it. In the historical section of the book, Ross Harrison clearly traces the history of democracy by examining the works of, amongst others, (...) Plato and Aristotle, Hegel and Marx. Informed by facts and detailed knowledge of these famous thinkers, Harrison provides a clear and cogent justification of democracy. (shrink)